A while turned into three years.
Lisa cried about it. Then she agreed to it. Then she stopped crying about it.
She came for supper on Sundays when she wasn’t working. Craig came with her about half the time. He and Tyler said maybe eleven words to each other across my table.
I retired from the school kitchen the same year Tyler moved in.
Thirty-one years of serving lunch at the elementary. And I served it to Tyler every school day from kindergarten through fifth grade. Tater tot hotdish on Thursdays. He always asked for extra.
Having him with me wasn’t hard.
It was the easiest thing I ever did. And I’d do it again tomorrow.
The county tow yard is out on the county road past the fairgrounds. A chain-link fence around a gravel lot, with a little white office trailer. The county contracts with a private towing outfit. And the outfit charges what it charges.
I drove Tyler out there Monday morning before school.
He hadn’t said much all weekend. He’d gone to church with me Sunday and sat through the whole sermon with his arms folded. Pastor Ron looked at him twice from the pulpit.
The woman working in the trailer was named Deb. I knew her from Tuesday bingo at the Legion hall.
“Marge,” she said. Then she saw Tyler, and she knew exactly why we were there.
Everybody already knew.
“Two-eighty,” Deb said. “Two-twenty for the tow. Sixty for two days of storage.”
“Two days? It’s been a day and a half.”
“Any part of a day counts,” Deb said. She said it kindly. “I’m sorry, Marge. I don’t make the rates.”
I paid it out of my purse in twenties.
Two hundred and eighty dollars is a good piece of a month for a retired school cook. Tyler watched me count it out on that counter. His ears went red.
“I’ll pay you back,” he said in the car.
“I know you will.”
“I mean it, Grandma. Every dollar.”
“Tyler. I know you will.”
The ticket was separate. A hundred and thirty dollars with all the fees once it went through the court administrator. Tyler insisted on paying that one himself.
He drove his car home with the cracked light. Very carefully. In broad daylight. And he parked it in my garage and didn’t touch it again until the part came.
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